Jumping

A little meta-post first...

On my way home, my mind always wanders, and inevitably comes up with something to blog about. But the blogpost always starts out big and ends up being pared to an almost entirely different topic. This post was going to be about being suicidal versus being an adrenaline junkie. But instead it's come to this... "Jumping: an extended metaphor." Metaphor for what? I'll let you decide.

Okay, here's the actual post...

When I was little, I never exercised much. Mostly, I was cocooned by my grandparents' many layers of love, and stayed home. Jumping--like all exercise--can be dangerous. You can twist your ankle or scrape your knee or even land badly and hit your head. Of course, because I never exercised when I was little, I had horrible balance. So even when I went to the parks with trampolines, I would only hesitantly go up, jump a bit half-heartedly, twist my ankle, and limp around the park for the rest of the day. Simply put, jumping was not a pleasant experience.

But jumping isn't all just jumping from the ground. You can jump from a diving board or from a building or from a cliff.

See, here's the thing about jumping: There's a certain height range that if you jump off, you won't survive. But if you jump from lower or higher than that, you'll most likely survive if you don't do anything stupid. Most people only ever jump off from below that height. They jump on trampolines, or from pool sides, or from a diving board. You can jump from 10 or 12 meters above water and as long as you don't do anything stupid, you'll be fine.

Some people suffer from depression. Or are drunk and high and stupid. And they decide to jump off high risers onto the concrete ground. There is too much impact for their bodies, but too little air time even if they had a parachute. That kind of jumping is dangerous and deadly. It's the reason of our natural fear of heights. It's the cause of the oh-so-sweet adrenaline rush when we climb to the top of the Empire State Building just to look down over the city dizzyingly, or jump off a canyon that is almost--but not quite--too high.

But if you can overcome your fear, you can be prepared and educated to jump from above that height. At 4000 meters, you can skydive out of the airplane. Or from the top of the Alps, you can jump and paraglide for hours. Some people wouldn't even call it jumping, though that is the initial move. Some people will only do it once, and land on the ground, stumbling, their queasy stomachs ready to retch.

Some people, though, they love it. They love the punishing rush of air, stopping their acceleration at terminal velocity. They love the squishy feeling in the ears from the rapid pressure change. They love the falling and falling sensation without the ground becoming instantly closer, of knowing that their parachute had better work, because nobody is going to rescue them as they fall.

You need time and money and preparation to jump off something so high. But is it worth it? For the right people it is. Should everybody try it once? Definitely, just so you'll know what it's like.